As the result of Tinker v. Pes Moines (1969) students have become more aware of their constitutional rights. However, the First Amendment rights of student newspapers have been abridged even after the Tinker decision stated that students' rights did not end at the schoolhouse gate. Even though the courts have recognized certain rights of both the student press and the professional press, areas of litigation during the past few years have involved obscenity, libel, and prior restraint. Of these three abridgments, the imposition of prior restraint by school administrators tends to be the greatest threat to a free student press. This study was begun with the intention of defining student press rights by reviewing major court cases involving the professional press as well as the student press, studying the literature in the area of the student press, and sending a questionnaire to the high school newspaper advisers in Virginia
